Seamless collaboration is emerging as a fundamental necessity in the architecture, engineering and construction industry. Whether in a “Big Room” or its virtual equivalent, effective planning and efficient problem solving, often between firms and across distance, can determine success or failure.
At Flux, our mission is to make building predictably great. We do this by breaking down barriers to construction quality caused by siloed construction data. We build tools that connect and organize information from different applications enabling designers, engineers, contractors, subcontractors, owners and material suppliers to use their preferred tools and seamlessly collaborate. Recently, Flux’s cloud application platform was used by architectural firm, SmithGroupJJR, and construction and development giant, Skanska, to collaborate on the construction of the new headquarters for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, currently under construction.
DC Water, Washington DC’s metropolitan water and sewer authority, sought to create a new headquarters facility to consolidate its administrative functions with flexible and functional office space, while being an example of state-of-the-art sustainable design. Developed as a design-build collaboration between SmithGroupJJR and Skanska, the new headquarters design arcs along the riverfront with a bold glass and aluminum curtain wall partially supported by a 200-foot-long, four-story truss in order to isolate it from the existing 1960’s pump station. The Headquarters will anchor DC Water’s new campus along the Anacostia River, embracing a relationship to the watershed and reflecting a stewardship of both the natural and built environments.
The 15,000 square foot, 6 story building comprises a facade of 3,000 panels. As per the building requirements, only 50% of the panels could be glazed, with an emphasis on using glazing, versus other shading techniques, on the south side of the building with a river view. During construction it became necessary to change elements of the façade of the building which necessitated going back to the wireframe and modifying the shape. Normally this might have set the project back weeks, if not months. By using Flux, SmithGroupJJR was able to deal with this change in a matter of days.
“Initially we were using Flux just to help with our workflow, but when we ran into this roadblock with the façade of the building the real value of Flux was realized,” said Gui Talarico who led the project at SmithGroupJJR. “Before using Flux we relied on a bunch of different standalone tools, one method for Excel files, another method for moving the data into Revit — putting it all in Flux allowed us to centralize the data transfer into a single platform. It made it more efficient and more organized. The Flux for AEC platform in the cloud makes cross team collaboration and interoperability easier and faster.”
The facade system was designed using solar heat gain analysis on the building model that optimally selected each panel’s material and laid it out as an unrolled building plan in Excel. The selected panels were mapped out in Excel and transferred through Flux to Grasshopper remotely. A complex script ran on top of the initial Rhino massing. As the team members were changing variables in Excel, like the material code, the facade was regenerated accordingly and in real-time. Flux was used to pass this data to Rhino via Grasshopper and back again in order to make custom changes to the default panel selection. The whole model was eventually passed into Revit for documentation, and the Flux for Dynamo plugin was used to extract the position of structural members from Revit in order to visualize and coordinate in Rhino.
“All of the base geometry for the model (level elevations, gridlines, building boundary line, facade massing, floor slab outlines etc.) was stored in Flux. We used Flux to store our origin point, so we could carry the scripts to different designers & software,” said SmithGroupJJR Architect David Fersh. “Being able to lock down reference data like an origin point, and then use it in multiple places, was really the decision factor for us to use Flux. What sets Flux apart from other AEC software tools is that it goes beyond sharing files, it preserves the inherent data structure in the process, which makes it extremely reliable.”
With Flux, SmithGroupJJR and Skanska were able to execute seamless collaboration in the face of complicated workflows, numerous design tools and last minute changes to the project specifications. Activating data in building planning, construction, and operation, enables radical efficiency improvements, generates new and valuable sources of data, and is a critical resource for the global construction market. At Flux, we want to revolutionize building-making by activating construction data to enable predictably great building.
Have a story about how Flux helped with your building project? Send it to community@flux.io
